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Historic vs Present Geographical Distribution of Lions - Historic vs Present Geographical Distribution of Lions. Ecosystem fragmentation: Growth in roads is fragmenting ecosystems. Relates to @geography2050 themes of sustainability, mobility & geo data. Bustard hunting: they only go to Pakistan in the first place because they've already killed all the houbara in Arabia.
What the 12 Days of Christmas might sound like in the future if we allow invasive species to take hold in Europe. African elephant range: population & threats - Ecoclimax.

*Tundra encroachment by tundra due to climate change. In Alaska, trees growing at the very edge of their northern range may be influenced by warming climate.

Will they eventually take over the tundra beyond? Scientists from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and other institutions are studying how these remote ecosystems may change.
New report confirms grim outlook for elephants. Extinctions during human era one thousand times more than before. The gravity of the world's current extinction rate becomes clearer upon knowing what it was before people came along.

A new estimate finds that species die off as much as 1,000 times more frequently nowadays than they used to. That's 10 times worse than the old estimate of 100 times. It's hard to comprehend how bad the current rate of species extinction around the world has become without knowing what it was before people came along.

The newest estimate is that the pre-human rate was 10 times lower than scientists had thought, which means that the current level is 10 times worse. Extinctions are about 1,000 times more frequent now than in the 60 million years before people came along.
Plant Life: the state of the world’s plants. The world’s first comprehensive report on plant species finds over one fifth at risk of extinction Steven Bachman flips the pages of a report with intent, landing on a spread that reads 2,034 plant species were discovered last year.

This seems like good news, but his sharp exhale says otherwise: ‘The scary thing for me is that 2,000 is also the number of plants we put on the Red List every year. So we’re not even gaining anything. We're just about breaking even.’ We are sitting at a table in the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. ‘Kew has had to expand its conservation elements,’ he says, ‘because extinction rates have become a real threat to biodiversity.’

The report in his hands is Kew’s State of the World’s Plants, a document he helped coordinate. What do plants mean for us? Our real-life relationship with plants is less of a plot device and more the green background that we have grown accustomed to. Nonetheless, plant extinctions rarely feature in news.
Extinct animals: Vintage tourist posters. <img src="<a pearltreesdevid="PTD4184" rel="nofollow" href=" class="vglnk"><span pearltreesdevid="PTD4185">http</span><span pearltreesdevid="PTD4187">://</span><span pearltreesdevid="PTD4189">pixel</span><span pearltreesdevid="PTD4191">.

Ecological footprints. Humanity’s demand for goods and services created from our planet’s resources have for a long time exceeded what the Earth’s ecosystems are capable of renewing.

It is estimated that we exceeded this limit in 1970. According to calculations from the Global Footprint Network, it was in the first half of August that we went into ecological debt for this year, on a day known as Earth Overshoot Day.
Nepal's Extinct Bird Spotted After Disappearing for 178 Years - EcoWatch. A team of bird-watchers stumbled upon a bird that hasn't been seen in eastern Nepal for almost 200 years.

The red-faced liocichla (Liocichla phoenicea) hasn't been spotted for 178 years and was thought to be locally extinct, according to Australian Geographic. A group of ornithologists spotted the bird on a 10-day bird watching tour. Photo credit: Paulo Coteriano, Flickr. Species at risk. Trying to get a picture of where and how many species globally are endangered or even at risk of extinction is a difficult undertaking.

Mapped here is data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of threatened species including endangered and vulnerable species. The main cartogram shows countries resized according to all animal and plant species assessed as being at risk of local extinction. The two smaller cartograms highlight that conservation efforts have very different spatial degrees of severity, which also partly reflects the different geographical distribution of species. Proportional mapping of countries according to invertebrate local extinction threats (Image: Benjamin Hennig) Invertebrates – estimates range between 97 and 99 per cent of all animals on Earth – are essential elements of ecosystems as waste recyclers and include insects, crabs, crayfish, corals and molluscs.

The sand cat is a shy and secretive animal only seen in the desert at night. It’s a nocturnal hunter perfectly adapted to its desert home. Advertisement Despite its wide distribution across the deserts of North Africa, Arabia and Central Asia, little is known about this elusive species.
Britain's dormice have declined by a third since 2000, report shows. Numbers of Britain’s native dormouse have declined by more than a third since 2000, according to the first definitive report on the state of the species.

The tiny, golden-brown animals were once widespread throughout England and Wales, but have become one of Britain’s most threatened mammals due to loss and fragmentation of their woodland habitat, changes in land management and a warmer climate.
Pandas are no longer considered endangered. Giant pandas are no longer considered endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

In an update to the Red List of Threatened Species, the IUCN has upgraded pandas from ‘endangered’ to ‘vulnerable’. Latest estimates put adult numbers at nearly 1,864 – a rise of 17% from 2004-2014. “The recovery of the panda shows that when science, political will and engagement of local communities come together, we can save wildlife and also improve biodiversity,” said Marco Lambertini Director General of the World Wildlife Fund, whose logo famously includes a panda.

Image: REUTERS/Stringer. Zero Wilderness Areas Will Remain in 100 Yrs. - EnviroNews. The researchers define wilderness “as biologically and ecologically largely intact landscapes that are mostly free of human disturbance,” which does not mean that there are no humans, just that the people living on the land haven’t developed it enough to disturb the natural habitats. The 3.3 million square kilometers that people have destroyed since 1993 is equal to approximately twice the size of Alaska, a state so large that if it were cut in half, Texas would become the 3rd largest state in the U.S. In other terms, the overall wilderness lost is approximately the same amount of square kilometers as is contained in all of the states from the Pacific Ocean through Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico combined – still leaving enough land left over to add Nebraska to the list. If the size of the devastation isn’t convincing enough, consider the fact that the areas in question also store large quantities of carbon.

It isn’t all bad news though. Dr.
Ecological footprints. Arabian Sand Cat Spotted for First Time in a Decade. The rare, elusive animal is incredibly hard to see, let alone study. An Arabian sand cat (Felis margarita harrisoni) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been seen for the first time in 10 years, according to New Scientist. The rare, secretive creature and expert nocturnal hunter is listed as "near threatened" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's "red list" of threatened species.

A 2015 camera trap survey, and subsequent published study, by scientist Shakeel Ahmed, of The Environment Agency, resulted in dozens of photographs of three individuals. Sand cats live in desert environments of central and southwest Asia and North Africa. They can handle the hot and cold temperature swings of those settings and will even burrow into sand dunes to stay cool. The animals look a lot like domestic cats and will weigh around 1.8 to 3.6 kilograms. The rare animals are losing habitat as well as food sources.
The fall foliage prediction map (2016)
Will the State of Nature make you Say YES to Wildlife?
Edward Burtynsky's corrupted landscapes – in pictures. Plant Life: the state of the world’s plants. Southwest Australia from the @Space_Station : Deforestation on a grand scale HT @IgnazioMagnani #BiodiversityHotspot.